Manchester City's new director of football is the man who recommended Pep Guardiola to Barcelona. Photograph: Alexandre Meneghini/AP

Two down, one to go? No sooner had Txiki Begiristain been confirmed as Manchester City's director of football than the inevitable question began to be asked and once they started they did not stop. Begiristain's statement said he was looking forward to working with Roberto Mancini, which it had to say of course, but it seemed everybody wanted to know the same thing: does this mean Pep Guardiola is coming too?

Aitor 'Txiki' Begiristain was the sporting director who turned to Pep Guardiola when Barcelona sacked Frank Rijkaard at the end of the 2008 season. He travelled to see José Mourinho and decided the Portuguese was too much of a fire-starter to entrust with the job. The decision seems logical now: Guardiola became the most successful coach in Barcelona's history, winning a treble in his first season. At the time the decision was a brave and risky one.

Now everyone wants Guardiola; back then, few did. Begiristain was one of them. Guardiola won the European Cup. Rijkaard, the first coach to work under Begiristain, had won one too. Joan Laporta, the Barcelona president, once said: "Bringing in Txiki was the best decision I ever made." Under him, Barcelona won two European Cups and five league titles in seven years. When he came in with Laporta in 2003, Barcelona had gone four years without a trophy and were lurching from crisis to crisis.

Yet Barcelona had begun a slide under Rijkaard and even before the 2007-08 season was finished Begiristain had determined a change was needed, even as some on the board resisted. The decision may even have come late, but it did finally come. Begiristain said Rijkaard had lost control of the dressing room. There was, though, no guarantee that Guardiola would wrest it back again, still less that he would prove successful. He had only been a coach for one season: with Barcelona B.

But Begiristain had faith in Guardiola. He formed part of the Johan Cruyff-led dream team alongside Guardiola that won the 1992 European Cup and they shared an approach. Cruyff was Laporta's mentor; Begiristain was Cruyff's suggestion.

Begiristain is a Basque who had been signed from Real Sociedad and claims to have learnt Catalan sitting in Barcelona's traffic jams, repeating everything he heard on the radio. Funny, chatty, likeable and smart, Cruyff described him as a "clever" player. So clever, Cruyff's No2 Charly Rexach claimed, that in the pouring rain and mud of Atoxa, he'd leave the pitch with hardly a stain on him.

As sporting director he insisted on the need for style and substance. Full-backs had to be attacking and at least one of the central defenders must be capable of bringing the ball out from the back – of being a player as well as a protector. Although there were question marks about some of his signings - Maxi López and Alexandr Hleb among them – the decision to go for Guardiola has huge symbolic significance. It would have been easier to chose Mourinho. Indeed, as Graham Hunter explains in his book Barça, Guardiola himself told him just that.

Begiristain had travelled to Lisbon with two directors, Marc Ingla and Ferran Soriano, to see Mourinho. The presentation was impressive but Begiristain, Soriano and Ingla were not keen; there was something about his personality that did not fit. They would win, sure, but it was not enough simply to win. Guardiola was not just the right manager, he was the right man. When they returned, the message was unanimous: it has got to be Guardiola. Soriano and Begiristain went to get him.

Soriano left Barcelona in 2008, Begiristain two years later and Guardiola last summer. Soriano and Begiristain have since arrived at Manchester City. Guardiola is in New York on a sabbatical, mulling over his next move.